Gotcha

The Day-Trader phenomenon is a part of the big myth - all it really takes is a little common sense and you can make anything work. No need for training or experience or intellectual rigor; just jump in and do it.

Intentionally Stupid

Better access to contraception = lower demand for abortion. It's a measurable and obvious cause-and-effect thing going on. If you're against preventing the pregnancy, then you simply are in favor of keeping the demand for abortion high.

So how can these guys be in favor of sustaining the demand for abortion? Well, first and foremost, it gives them a way to keep abortion as a political weapon; but the kicker is that they can hide their cynicism in the fog of being "against ObamaCare". The politics of fear requires the maintenance of as many perceived threats as possible. If you allow any real progress towards solving even small parts of any problem, then you have to concede that government is in fact good for something; and you start to lose an important way to motivate your contributors and your voters.

There's also a pronounced element of their outright fear of sexuality in general, and the sheer terror they feel when they have to contemplate female sexuality in particular.

Hang Onto Yer Hats

This shit just makes me sick to my stomach.

"The conventional wisdom on Wall Street was that the economy was growing -- that the worst was behind us," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "Now what people are realizing is the stimulus didn't work, and we may be headed back to recession." --CNNMoney

"Conventional wisdom..."?  That's Corp Code for happy talk.  They've been sittin' there in their Executive Suites jackin' each other off, collecting nice fat checks at taxpayer expense, pretending that what they tell the Press Poodles to say has some actual relation to the truth.

And the crap about "the stimulus hasn't worked..."?  What exactly do they think was holding this shit up in the air this whole time?  The stimulus is gone, and now there's nothing to supplement what little demand there was.

I imagine right now, Geithner et al are having lots of phone conversations in very blunt language and urgent tones about taking huge amounts of the cash that Big Corp has been sitting on for 2 years and pouring it into the markets tomorrow to try to stop the bleeding.

!Wild Speculation Alert!
I can also imagine a guy like Jamie Dimon lickin' his chops at the prospects of a leveraged buyout of significant government assets.  And we're not talkin' about the NYC Water Dept or the 10 biggest airports.  We're talkin' about dismantling the whole bureaucracy and auctioning off the pieces.

But where do we start?  The standard play here would be to ramp up the Blame-The-Victim machinery.  The narrative should begin with "The American worker just isn't properly equipped to compete in the global marketplace blah blah blah."  Then you need to point at the schools.  A lot of this is already in place of course; this just makes it easier to topple the whole system, and make us more accepting of a corporate-style takeover.

Disaster Capitalism is now here.

Reconstruction - In All Its Gnarly Glory

I couldn't figure out how to get a ruler in the shot to show scale - the scar's about 7 1/2 inches.

The dressing came off Monday, and it can stay off as long as the wound stays closed and doesn't start to leak. Shower tomorrow (post-op day 7).  Swabbing myself down every day with a sponge and baby wipes is a drag.

And BTW, Dammit

If anybody (particularly anybody who self-identifies as a conservative) really wants to do something that might actually prevent another Debt Crisis, one thing to do is pretty simple: Amend the War Powers Resolution to require real-world financing proposals be enacted before the 90-day Freebie Period lapses.

Double Dip

I'm tryin' hard to figure out how the Debt Deal doesn't make things worse.  An awful lot of people are stuck in this kind of economic limbo, where treading water is about all they can hope for in the near and mid term; and when the average age of the American worker is close to 52, "middle term" can easily mean the remainder of your working life when the economy is stuck in the doldrums.  So while there's a fair stack of good news for households in the $200K+ category, that leaves a huge number of "middle classers" at risk of losing buoyancy and slipping under.

Here's the thing:  There's no substitute for demand.  The law is the law, and no combination of ideology and happy talk is going to change the simple fact that demand drives inflation and inflation is what makes capitalism work in the first place.  You can argue all you want about regulating the thing appropriately, but that's a different conversation.  If your premise is false, your conclusion CANNOT be true.  Demand is everything.  Every time we've tried to move away from that bedrock principle, we've seen some extremely bad shit pile up on us.

So if we take this debt deal at face value (not particularly valid, but ya gotta start somewhere), then what I see is an attempt to remove about $200 Billion worth of demand from the system every year for 10 years.

Here's my clever representation of this dynamic as a DOS batch file:
10: demand goes down, prices go down
20: prices go down, wages go down
30: wages go down, demand goes down
40: GO TO 10

No matter what, Obama owns this thing now.  What exactly he owns is up for debate.  And of course, the main point is to look at what affect this acton and the politics of this action will have on campaign contributions for 2012.

Contributors get people elected.  Big Contributors (eg: Target) that have aligned themselves  too closely with political issues that proved to be unpopular have taken occasionally severe beatings.

I think the strategy is for the White House to continue sending very strong signals to the business community to the effect that "this next part of the shift is on; this is for real and the smart money is backing policy that is fact-based, pragmatic and market-driven - not the Looney Toons bullshit coming from the wingnuts who think everything'll be fine if we just close our eyes and pretend it's 1954."

What if Obama really is playing way over all of our heads?  Maybe he's giving us the impression of the rope-a-dope, or the 3D chess master (remember that the Press Poodles aren't really all that bright - their job is to smash-fit whatever is going on into a prepackaged narrative).  What if Obama is actually working towards a position that forces the Tea Party GOP to isolate itself to the point where it consists of nothing but Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul, Pat Robertson and The Koch Bros?  But if that's true on the Repub side, then it can just as easily mean he's in the process of stripping away the the hardcore leftie base of the Dems.  All of which translates to the emergence of a "new political entity" - which probably isn't really new at all.

As always, we'll see.  Or at least we'll see something that may or may not be what actually happened.  Maybe we should call this Quantum Politics.  We see only the evidence that something MIGHT have happened, and we're left to theorize as to whether or not it was "real".

Reconstruction (update)

Pretty good day yesterday and a good night last night.  Up at about 5 this AM.

I had the first of what will be several home visits from Lee (nurse) and Laurie (PT) yesterday.  They both told me I'm doing a lot better than most of the people they see.  This is one of those things that you can't possibly take any credit for, but find it hard to say anything other than thank you.  Kinda like when somebody says you have beautiful kids:  "Why thank you - I made them myself, you know; and I don't mind telling you how hard it is to get all that genetic sequencing just right..."  Anyway, it's nice having a winning ticket on that little slice of Life's Grand Lottery.  Pain levels have been very reasonable so far, and the pain is what they worry most about.  If you can't knock down the pain, then you can't do the exercises, and it'll take longer to get back to a healthy state; and many times, you never get back to where you need to be.  So they send you home with a basketful of meds, most of which are aimed at the pain.

My drug regimen for the next couple of months has me taking a daily cocktail of 5 medications (all of which are added to whatever I was on before the surgery of course).  Luckily, I've always resisted the paradigm of Health Management by Prescription, so other than my One-A-Day vitamin supplement, I started with a more or less clean slate.

Coumadin (to prevent blood clotting)
Indomethacin (anti-inflammatory)
Tramadol (non-narcotic pain killer)
Oxycodone (narcotic pain killer)
Colace (stool softener - constipation is always number one on the list of side effects for pain meds)

Anyway, I have a set of 10 exercises that I need to do 2 or 3 times a day that are aimed at simply getting the musculature back into place to support the new joint.  God's design (particularly of the lower back and hips) became obsolete once we started walkin' around on our hind legs.  When the joint deteriorates to the point where you have to replace original equipment with steel and plastic, you have to cut away most of the tendons and ligaments, and rely on the body's amazing adaptive capabilities to substitute muscle as the support structure.  Obviously, they have to cut thru a good inch and a half of meat and then pry the muscles away from the bones to expose the parts of the joint that have to be removed and sculpted in order to accept the replacement parts. (Orthopods often refer to themselves as carpenters, btw)  So the rehab is all about training the muscles to take over the functions of keepin the joint in place as the wound heals and the muscles re-attach to the bone.

I'm still working on some of the different angles of this thing, primarily looking for the If/Then/Else algorithms that drive this weird system of ours.  Some of the costs outlined on the Explanation(s) Of Benefits we've gotten so far are a bit shocking, so more on all of that later.

Reconstruction (update)

Day 4 Post-Op:
OK night.  Still pretty stiff, and I've gotten some noticeable swelling going now in my left leg.

I came home with:
Coumadin (blood thinner)
Oxycodone (pain killer)
Tramdol (non-narcotic pain killer)
Colase (stool softener - to counteract constipation due to the pain killers)

Avoiding the oxycodone in favor of tramadol, just trying to stay as drug-free (and as uncomplicated) as possible.

Expecting first visits from Nursing and Physical Therapy this PM.

Debt Deal

The headlines are all saying a deal's been worked out; and of course, "the lefties" are up in arms because they see it as Obama caving to the demands of the Tea Partiers, while the wingnuts on the radical right say they hate it because it requires compromise and lacks the kind of purity they say God sent their guys to Washington to establish.

So I don't wanna be too centrist about all this, but when everybody makes a big show of being upset with something happening in DC, you can be certain of a couple of things:
1) Some very important constituencies are making loud noises about losing some of their clout.
2) Somehow, the really good politicians manage to stay in power through all this "upheaval and change".

Cutting to the chase, while not meaning to oversimplify: First, remind yourself that contributors are the ones who get a politician elected - voters are the people who go to the polls and confirm the results that the contributors have paid for in advance.

Second, that means we're talking about politicians representing their Contributors, while the Contributors represent various Voting Factions.  We've been more and more accepting of the notion that "government should look and act like a business" - well, we've largely achieved exactly that.  We've evolved a system that's installed a layer of Middle Mgmt (ie: Lobbying Firms, PACs, Think Tanks, etc), and those middle managers have taken on some very important tasks that used to be the responsibilities of the elected officials.  eg: We have Lobbyists who are hiring people to investigate, draft and negotiate legislation.  We have Representatives who are then acting like a Sales team as they try to convince the voters that this piece of legislation is a good thing.

There are many more wrinkles and convolutions of course, and I don't think I have a direct line to the truth here, but I think it's safe to say we're nowhere near the kind of democracy we were told about in school.

If I accept the premise that "government should look and act like a business", am I not also expected to draw the inference that "government should look and act less like a democracy"?

Taken together, I think this debt debate and the the fact there are Repub advantages in Governorships and Statehouse Majorities and on down to County Boards and City Councils means that Repubs believe they're on the verge of something pretty big.

I find it hard to disagree.  I think we could be one or two election cycles away from taking the final plunge.  They'll keep telling us this is what democracy is, and we'll keep trying harder and harder to believe we haven't completely fucked up the greatest thing ever - blue pills for everybody.  In a binary world, your only choices are conformity and death.

Hoping against hope that I'm wrong.

Reconstruction (predate)

I remember nothing from the time they came to get me in the Pre-Op room and when they installed me in my regular bed.  I was of course hoping to remember having said something witty and brave, but there's literally nothing there.  I must be incredibly susceptible to the affects of the narcotics they're using these days.

The original plan was to get to the room and try to get up and around that afternoon.  But that didn't work out, so they came in the next day.  I don't mind telling you I was shocked at the level of pain the first time I got out of that bed.  I don't think I managed my morphine very well.

Reconstruction (update)

Got here at about 8am Thur, 7-28; going home today (Sun 7-31) at about 11am.  It's weird because I don't feel that much different in some respects.  eg: It hurts a lot when I move in certain ways.   I have to remember that Dr Browne has fixed the main dysfunctions, and so the main causes of pain in my hip are gone now, replaced by new causes of pain, but ones which will heal and improve, and cause less pain as time passes.

There's a subtle shift in mindset that actually flips me over from entropy and disintegration, to  an outlook considerably more in keeping with my general expectations for improvement and advancement.

I think a lot of people see me as cynical, but I believe my outlook is pretty optimistic.  I think you have to work pretty hard to maintain an appropriate level of skepticism, so I'm sure that gets misperceived as cynicism.  What I'm talking about is pushing things forward, gently or aggressively, according to what the facts dictate is possible to achieve.  For the first time in a good stretch of years, I have the feeling that on a personal level, I have a real shot at making things better.  I'm enough of a Randian to understand that as I make myself better for myself, I have a better shot at making the rest of my little corner of the world better for everybody who shares it with me.  That's how it's always worked before anyway, so here's hopin'.

Reconstruction (update)

Prob'ly going home today.  2 pretty good nights in a row.  Mostly headaches are the big problem, because (I think) when I sleep on my back, slightly elevated, I end up with some tension in my neck that gives me the headache.  Dunno - could also be caffeine withdrawal - just guessing.  Nobody else seems to know much either.

It always amazes me that the hospital is where you go to get better, but for whatever reason, you feel bad the whole time you're there.

Reconstruction (update)

Day 2 Post-Op.  Difficult night, mostly because everything's uncomfortable.  There's no position - sitting or lying down - that works for any real length of time.  I feel hung over.  Kinda light headed and shaky and with a low-level headache, no appetite and mild nausea.

It makes some sense that discontinuing the morphine will make a big diference.  They were concerned enough to send me down for xrays a couple of hours ago to make sure there's no obstructions,  Waiting  to hear.

But, last nite and this AM, I was able to negotiate 3 trips to the bathroom to pee.  Much rejoicing.

Reconstruction

Here's an approximation of what my left hip looks like, compared with normal:

By this time tomorrow, I should be chillin' in the recovery room under the influence of heavy sedation, with my brand new, store-bought hip joint in place.

Not looking forward to 3 days in the hospital, and 6 weeks of nuthin' but rehab before I can start doing what I wanna do, but if I get to walk around like a normal human again, I'll take whatever they're offering.

I hope to be able to do some updates while I'm stuck in bed over the weekend.  If nothing else, I'll see y'all on the other side.

A Thought

It's never about what they say it's about.

What if the GOP crazies are willing to default on the debt because they think it's a clever way to fuck the Chinese?

Just wonderin'.

Elizabeth Warren And Today's Quote

Ask a smart and qualified woman what it means to her when somebody calls her a "know-it-all", and I'm guessing you'll hear back something like, "It means I kept using my brain even after no one wanted to fuck me anymore" -- to bastardize a line from Tina Fey (via Jason Linkens).

I think we're missing a huge opportunity to straighten out some serious shit by not getting Elizabeth Warren confirmed to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  But now there's talk of running her for senate.  Could be interesting.

Rupertgate

Standard play - claim victimhood and blame "the media".

In one way, I just gotta give 'em props. The bottom of the shit-hole I like to call DumFux News will simply never be reached.


Read this From James Fallows at the Atlantic.

Balanced Budget Nonsense

Bruce Bartlett is becoming a real hero for me.

Historically, those supporting a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution were only interested in balance per se. That is, requiring that revenues and expenditures be as close to equal as possible. The view was that if the states – almost all of which are required to balance their budgets annually – could do it then so could the federal government.

One problem is that the states don’t really balance their budgets. All have separate operating and capital budgets and only the operating budget is required to be balanced. By contrast, the federal budget lumps together operating and capital expenses, such as roads and buildings that will last for decades. Moreover, the states are notorious for using gimmicks to give the appearance of budget balance even though they run deficits.

TIme Out

I've been in Vacation Mode since Thursday.  I plan on being back around the 25th.

Shortly after that, I'll be getting my first bionic hip.  If I'm up to it, and the hospital allows it, I'll start posting again right after surgery - as soon as I can anyway.

See ya'll on the other side.

Some Not So Revoltin' Developments?

Recent developments in the "debate" over raising the debt ceiling seem to confirm that the Repubs are really struggling with some serious structural problems. I think it's possible that Obama has pulled off an amazing thing, even if all he did was to let the Repubs dance at Center Stage long enough for people to see how crass and cynical they've become.

I doubt any of the Repubs changed their minds about the debt ceiling. In fact, I doubt most Repubs have any real objection to raising the limit at all, even tho' an awful lot of people have to have been worrying about the deficits and the debt for a good long while. If anything's actually changed, it's just that McConnell and Boehner and Cantor have taken such a public beating, they have to put up some bullshit strategy that makes them look a little less stupid and lets them believe for a while that they can get back out in front of their own party before it evaporates. Right now, this looks like nothing less than a complete breakdown. And it's prob'ly because the Repub Leadership got an attitude adjustment from the mega-donors who aren't gonna sit by and let the PseudoCons fuck up what's left of a good thing. (Obama's fund-raising numbers indicate something significant is happening, so maybe he's managed to strip off some of the big money providers - of course we won't find much info on that because the Citizens United thing means most of the money can stay incognito)

So now (for once) Obama doesn't have to beat the Repubs, because the Repubs are beating the Repubs. I think the indicator to watch is Michelle Bachmann's campaign. She's the Queen of the PseudoCons; the leader of the Radical Rowdies. We'll hafta wait and see what DumFux News comes up with, but so far, they've seemed reluctant to promote her in a big way. And it's possible that Fox has to divert too much energy to defending itself because of the whole Rupertgate thing, and so they'll be less of a factor. Dunno, but I'll bet the big donors are slappin' Roger Ailes around now too. It promises to get funner and funner.

Finally, here's a question: Why has the DNC/Obama Campaign quietly released this little commercial now? First, it's always a good idea to hit 'em with the hard sell right after some good news. But mainly, if I'm right in thinking a bunch of the big donors are shifting away from the Repubs, and if the Dems wanna re-assert their brand as "The Party of the Little Guys" in order to keep us from recognizing them as the same kind of Coin-Operated Politicos as anybody else, then they need something to demonstrate that they have "huge numbers of regular folk, sending in their nickels and dimes".